Monday, April 26, 2010

As most of you know, I'm currently thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. This activity often holds one special challenge for me--getting clues. I can check e-mail, but I can't necessarily get on the Internet. I really needed a way to get clues to me via e-mail.

So, while Amanda is here to slackpack me, I've been working on a new feature late into the nights. Admittedly, it's largely for selfish purposes, but for those of you who also have e-mailing ability on your cell phone but don't necessarily have access to Atlas Quest on the Internet--or maybe you don't have an easy way to store clues on your device--this feature might be very useful for you. =)

To make it work, send an e-mail to 'boxes' at 'atlasquest.com' including the location you want letterbox clues for as the subject. It's just a normal run-of-the-mill location-based search, so anything that works for a location based search works here--cities, intersections, addresses, zip codes, and so forth. Leave the body of the message blank. (Or you can write stuff in it, but AQ will ignore anything you write.)

After a minute or two, you should get a reply with the clues for that location. If the e-mail address is one that is registered with Atlas Quest, it will also strip out clues for boxes you've planted and already found.

12 comments:

Okay that's just frickin cool. I do have access to AQ via my iPhone, but I imagine there are times that could be handy, especially to save a bunch of clues to access when needed without chewing away on battery power and roaming charges.

When you get bored later, any chance of finding a way to link it to the advanced search too? I perform too many complicated searches that use tags and distance variations that would be cool to have handy too.

Oh thank you! You don't know how many times I've wanted to access AQ when all I've had is my phone and/or PSP. My PSP needs Wifi and even then it doesn't always work. AQ is a too large of a site for my basic cell phone.